Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Good evening. welcome to the blog, those of you who are new. I know it's a tough day to be a reader of xkcd. Pull up a chair, why don't you? You may be here for a long time. I know I certainly have a lot to say today. Jay even got so upset that he went and wrote his own post about this comic! Why, even cranky old Rob came out of his shell and wrote a post. Emotions, it would seem, are running high. Let's talk, no?

OH. HOLY. CRAP. OH WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK, RANDALL? what is this supposed to be? Seriously, tell me what it is supposed to be. I don't have a fucking clue.

No? You aren't going to say anything? Well that sucks, because I'll tell you what the fuck this comic looks like to me.

It looks like the little story you are trying to tell is this.

Man (let's call him "Randy") and woman (conveniently labeled "Megan") walk into a restaurant.. They take off their clothes. They take pictures of themselves and label the various interesting parts of themselves that they see. They are asked to leave the restaurant.

Is that the story you are trying to tell, Randall? Because if so, YOU SUCK IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY.

For one thing, EW GROSS. when we want to look at pictures of naked people, we have other websites for that. Your website is for giving us humor, or in my case, seething hatred. NOT NAKED PEOPLE. to repeat: WE HAVE ALREADY GOT GOOD SOURCES ON NAKED PEOPLE please do not feel the need to join them!

Now I know a lot of people are saying that I (and those like me) only object to this comic because of the GRAPHIC NUDITY. We are prudish medieval types who do not like to be reminded that people are naked sometimes. So let me reiterate: I don't object to graphic nudity. I object to it being in my webcomics. xkcd has a prissy disclaimer at the bottom, talking about how it sometimes has "strong language (which may be unsuitable for children)." Maybe it's time he adapts that to include the phrase "...and VAGINAS, which may be unsuitable for anyone NOT EXPECTING TO SEE VAGINAS AT THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT IN TIME."

the loud objecting to UP CLOSE VAGINAS may, unfortunately, distract people from the other terrible problems with this comic, such as, to chose one particular flaw, it makes no fucking sense.

Why the hell are these people taking such pictures in such a place? If you are going to have them be at a restaurant and tell us that they are there, we need a reason. Doesn't have to be perfect - maybe the lighting is just right there, maybe they want to make little food versions of their vaginas, maybe they just want to scare little kids or get revenge on a waiter - the point is, all we have now are two people gettin' crazy at a Friday's and that to me just suggests: Complete and horrible psychosis.

The alt-text ("For many of the anatomy pictures on Wikipedia, I think this is actually not far from reality. They only look all formal and professional due to careful cropping.") makes me wonder if the joke is supposed to be making fun of explicit photos on wikipedia, and their low quality. Maybe? The only little problem with that is: Making jokes about crappy porn will only entertain people very familiar with said porn (ie, creepy losers) and means that if you've spent enough time looking at those pictures, why, look at that! You are the king of the creepy losers!

--------------------

Randall Munroe, you must understand, is an artist. He must be, otherwise his graphicdepictions of sex would basically be pornography, not art. And while he certainly visits the pornographic haven that is 4chan on a regular basis, surely he as a human is far above that level. Far above.

And you see, as an artist, Randall has to make artistic choices. So for example, whereas a lowly plebian like you or me would just draw some silly panels showing what happened in the story, Randall presents us with the finished product of our two heroes' adventure. They are creating illustrations, you see, of human anatomy, for a text of some kind. That is why they are so clearly labelled and numbered!

But there is more to it.

Because Randall Munroe, you must understand, is an idiot. He must be, otherwise his slides wouldn't fucking have speech bubbles on them. Also he wouldn't draw such a detailed fucking girl only to zoom out oh-so-slightly and have her revert to stick-figure-ness. Look: You can draw stick figures if you want, but don't expect us to believe that they are anatomically correct. They're stick figures! christ.

Also where, exactly, are these "plates" being shown? In a book? On an overhead projector? I know it seems trivial but I ask because why would they include plates 17 and 18, which are clearly not what they are labeled as (because Randall is not quite comfortable enough in his heterosexuality to draw male anatomy, just yet, though to be fair he is willing to talkabout it an awfullot) and of course, there is the question of why these photographs have speech bubbles on them. Isn't that a good question? I wish I could take a picture of someone talking and have their words come out on the camera, but I cannot.

Hey HERE'S ANOTHER QUESTION: who took the picture in the last panel, and why?

why oh why did they want to do this in a restaurant?

----------Who's got class? The dude who posted a blog post about urinals the same day he gave us this piece of shit comic! woooo! ps all your urinal-theorizing is OLD JOKES. very old.----------

Lastly, there is one last little detail about this comic that I am sure most astute readers of the blog noticed instantly: Our good friend Megan has returned.

Megan, for those of you who do not know, is the generic girl in xkcd. She is often singled out by name. For a while she was just breaking up with Randall, then he started stalking her, so that was weird, and now we've got him drawing lots of GRAPHICALLY NUDE pictures of her on the internet. Why? Oh lord, why? I don't care if Megan is real or not (ok that's not true, I hope to god she is not real) but when Randall keeps using the same name all the danged time it feels creepy anyway. It feels like "I have not gotten over this girl so I will obsess about it inappropriately on the internet." To avoid it, there are two steps you can take: Use different names each time, or stop being SO GOD FUCKING DAMN INAPPROPRIATE. Hm? HM?

------------Christ this comic is just so horrible in so many ways. Can people please, please please realize that xkcd is terrible now? Please? let's just end this collective nonsense and spend time with things that make sense and are funny, and most importantly, DO NOT INVOLVE A SINGLE CARTOON VAGINA.

is it so much to ask?

fun facts: this post had 175 comments before I even updated the placeholder with actual content. Also, 6000 people visited this blog today. DAMN! this comic seriously started the shitmost of shitstorms

301 comments:

This takes the normal level of "ugh" "what the fuck" and "do not want" of normal xkcd comics, shits on it, and hurls it so far into space it smacks itself on the back and creates a black hole of creepy hurghleblahhalgbh.

megan again; sex, sex, and more sex, this time publically, how QUIRKYLOL, and the only time he takes to actually draw something other than stick figures in weeks is this shit? He is just a damaged person.

I *think* I get what the joke is supposed to be. But I'm not really sure, and it seems impossible that anyone could figure it out at first glanc, so the first thirty seconds or so of looking at this is just, "yup, that's a very detailed breast drawn by randall munroe. When was the last time he drew non-stick-figure art? Oh wow, there's a vagina too. Sure is, uhh, detailed." Then the next few minutes is, "so wait, was he having sex with megan on a table in TGI fridays? Or were they just taking pictures of their genitalia? Would a detailed drawing of a dick have come next? Why exactly is this supposed to be funny? Maybe it's just a bunch of really deep 'romance, sarcasm, and language' that I just don't get." All in all, pretty troubling

I was worried; he'd been skimping on the SEXkcd lately. And all that pent up frustration comes into play here.

Before Carl gets to question this specifically, I have some questions:So who kept taking pictures after they were caught?Why were those pictures still labeled slides?Why are there word bubbles in the slides?

I am unable to suspend my disbelief, as is par for the course. I think this counts as "Not awkward at all" for the purpose of the Randy and Megan characters

The joke is made more clear by the alt-text. It's not exactly a joke, as such - more of a humorous observation regarding the way anatomy photos, particularly the ones on wikipedia, often look a bit like someone just climbed up on a table and got their partner to start snapping away happily.

He has taken that idea and extrapolated it to present a scenario involving two people producing anatomy photos in the middle of a TGI Friday's.

Good God that's awful!It seemed like Randy just wanted an excuse to prove that he knows what a naked girl looks like. I also love how he avoids drawing a penis, is he afraid of drawing one? The whole comic is one of the most contrived things I've seen so far. Why didn't anyone notice? Why can't they do this at home? Why does he think thick black lines are suitable fan service?

I think the only way to save this comic would be if the alt text said something like "actually all stick figures have always been naked, TGIF just has a rule about flash photography"

Woah, Randall is so cool! He knows what the breasts of a human female look like and sort of knows what the vagina looks like too!! =O (I am seriously starting to get sick of how much xkcd has been sucking these past few weeks/months)

I suspect Randall is willingly trying to fuck up (haha, pun) the minds of the people in this blog. Nothing else can explain that. I'm horrified; Randall is pushing and trampling all the limits of his credibility and his common sense, and only because he KNOWS two things: his fanboys will stand for anything; and in terms of Internet humour, the cruder the better.

I mean, xkcd had very crude moments before, but they were crude in a classy manner. How is this classy? This is dumb and cheap. I can't believe I saw that. It ruined my day.

I show up here from time to time rambling about the difference between a joke and its execution, and this time is no different. I'll leave you with this:

At some point, Randall Munroe had to say to himself,

"Yes, I do believe the best way to explain how explicit pictures on Wikipedia are tasteless... is by poorly drawing my own rendition of them in excruciating detail."

And then, he had to think:

"You know, it's okay with me that I drew her nipple crooked."

And then, he had to spend more time drawing the comic than usual to get the realistic effect he wanted.

And yet at no point did he think to himself,

"Maybe people would be uncomfortable telling their friends about a comic where the front page is covered in cartoon porn."

I have to use a line from Penny Arcade: trying to make a joke about this comic is like making fun of a clown. What are you going to do, laugh at his floppy shoes? His goofy hair? This comic is already ridiculous, distasteful, and unfunny. The joke is that Randall thinks this is acceptable.

I'm so pissed off right now, and yet my only course of action is to stand here shocked and bewildered.

The question is, whether or not XKCD will suck so much it will come out the other side and become a masterpiece of sucking. People will herald it as a brilliant satire of the way laziness takes over and how there are only a finite number of ideas in anyone's head. Randall will be showered with praise all the while knowing that the comics he is producing are actually meant to be straight humor.

the megan thing, he might be fucking with us. this comic, there's no way.

Carl, you probably have some stats on how many hits this blog gets. I don't have that number for xkcd, but Alexa tells me it's ranked as about the #2000 site in the world. Assume that web traffic follows a roughly Zipfian distribution (which is a reasonable hypothesis, as it turns out).

Roughly a quarter of the world population has Internet access; let's say that 10% of that population use it on a daily basis. That's 150 million people; assuming that roughly equal amounts use Yahoo, Google, and MSN, we can get a rough estimate of 50 million unique visitors to Google a day.

Google's I think the #2 most visited website, so Zipf's law tells us that xkcd should have about 1/1000 of the unique visitors that Google does. This tells us that xkcd has about 50,000 unique visitors daily. Is this right? Almost certainly not, but it's hopefully within an order of magnitude. (If I had to guess myself, I'd say that it would be something more like 100,000 regular readers, plus people who click links and don't return until they see another link. Although it almost certainly gets more hits MWF than the other days, so...)

I'm gonna estimate the size of the active xkcdsucks community at maybe 50-100, if that. There are almost certainly more unique visitors coming in every day, but they wouldn't be "in" on the "joke." There's no way Randy would make a comic like this as a fuck-you to MAYBE 1% of his readers, with generous estimates. It doesn't make sense.

I like the idea someone had of "the stick figures have always been nude, etc" as the punch line. Would have greatly improved the comic. Raising it AAAAAAAAALLLLLLLll the way to "Horribfuckus." There currently exist no words to describe the level it's at. Especially since there's no particular reason the "penis" slides should have been labelled. It's basically breaking its own logic, what little it may ever have had.

So Radall a) refuses to draw penis and b) hardly ever draws men recieving oral, only women. As a master therapist I can tell that this means Randall is SCARED OF PENISES, EVEN HIS OWN, AND THINKS THEY CAN BITE LIKE SHARKS

Also he totally could have set up this same 'joke' more tastefully but I guess actually spending a minute or two to consider other, more effective ways to lay out a comic is too much work

oh boy: I get to be the first voice of dissent, and I don't even like xkcd ever

but this is how it is - this comment page is starting to sound like a community church meeting. Yes, it's a lousy comic. The idea is that hey, if you think about it, anatomical photographs are basically people taking shots of their genitalia; it could feasibly be a witty observation and thus funny in the right framework, but this sure ain't it.

Some of you are reacting, however, as if a drawing of female genitalia is the lewdest of obscenities, and that what you have witnessed today is an image so twistedly carnal that you will never again look upon the world with the tender eyes of innocence

seriously guys, maybe it's time to scale back on the revulsion and outrage and consider the real problem here: terrible joke

Anon 706: I think people's reactions here aren't resulting from being grossed out or offended by people's naughty bits. It's the fact that it was totally unexpected. You might expect sticks humping on each other, or maybe even a stick with a boner (read: an extra line,) but this level of, uh, detail, is pretty much out of left field. It would be like a Mary Worth strip where she suddenly strips down to her girdle and does a provocative dance.

Well, actually, now that I think about it, one might assume that Randall got down with that junk. And then I wholeheartedly agree that having to see something Randall Monroe defiled with his nerd essence is freaking GNASTY.

I will brush aside the first two panels (as WTF inducing as they may be) and instead say that Randall has once again included horribly forced dialog in a comic (the last line). Why would the manager of TGIF say "TGI Friday's is a family establishment"? It seems to me it would be more natural to say "This is a family establishment" or "This is a family restaurant" or "WTF do you think you are doing?", as opposed to say the restaurant name that and using the word establishment as if he was in a formal business meeting instead of seeing two people taking photographs of eachothers genitals on a dining room table.

It's as if Randall took everything we consider to be bad in a comic and put it in this comic.

I just discovered this site yesterday and fell in love immediately since I have felt that XKCD has been going downhill for quite a while. So now that I've started reading this blog, Randall puts out this "comic".

Damnit.XKCD started sucking a long time ago, but now it has finally Crossed the Line Twice.XKCD has not only jumped the shark, it then proceeded to kill the shark, eat it, shit it back out and then jump the shit.

Randall was apologetic enough to warn everyone that attends the unofficial #xkcd IRC channel that the comic was NSFW three hours beforehand. Unfortunately, the people that actually go outside to go to work are out of luck.

Alright, I sort of calmed down. Jesus. A few observations while I anxiously await Carl's post:

1. What the -fuck- is going on.2. Randall is -definitely- fucking with us on the whole megan thing.3. What the FUCK is going on.4. Nobody at the forums gets what's going on either. A couple of people have asked, and in three pages of discussion no smart-alecy type has bothered to explain. IT IS BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW EITHER.5. WHAT THE FUCK!7. People at the forums are annoyed at people who complain that its NSFW, and the standard reply seems to be "Stop slacking off at work." Because yeah, it really takes an awful lot of time out of your work day to read a comic.6. WHAT!8. This has GOT to be the angriest of Carl's Angriest Rants. It must be. The first line of his placeholder post made me laugh so hard.

Actually, the more I think about this comic... I think it's meant to be a response to his critics. The perspective of the last two panels is different, interesting, and technically challenging - exactly what his art hasn't been recently. It's definitely growing on me, despite the lovingly-rendered female anatomy.

Sadly, I think Person #1 is right. Randall has a thing for making "recurring characters" based on a single consistent trait and no, y'know, personality or character. Black Hat Man loves violence and chaos. Beret Man thinks life is an ADVENTURE and is all, like, warm and fuzzy and nauseatingly sweet. Megan is a girl. I am vomiting.

Not that I'm sad because I want Randall to think we're important enough to mock like this. It would just, y'know, suck less if that was his reason for the Megan thing.

Found this:http://www.bbspot.com/News/2007/10/xkcd-comic-reenactment-leads-to-100-deaths.html

"I didn't think people would try to recreate this one," said comic creator Randall Munroe. "If I had known I had this much control over people, I would've drawn a comic about washing my car, or building an army of cybernetic sex slaves for me. I probably shouldn't run that comic about using physics to assassinate the President of Bolivia."

Anon 11:19 Please, tell me that's a joke, or a satire piece, or something. I'm pretty sure it is, especially since there's no way anyone would be ass enough to make a joke like that in response, even Randall.

Randall doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would laugh all the way to the bank. He seems like the kind of person who would walk there slowly, sighing all the while at memories of lost loves and wondering what bodily functions he can apply mathematic principles to. While waiting for the next available teller, he might think of something quirky and out-there he could say/do, but would be too reserved to actually execute it.

The fucked-uppest part of all of this is that Megan is (from what I've been told) a real person, and is Randall's roommate or something. She almost certainly reads xkcd.

So, I put this to the ladies of the xkcdsucks community: if you had a male friend who was all "Hey, you know that webcomic I write that has probably hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide? The one where I constantly mention you by name and portray you in a creepy and obsessive way? How would you feel if I drew some annotated close-ups of your private parts in graphic detail, made it clear that they belonged to you, and put them in the comic?" How would you react to that?

Now, I don't know Megan. Perhaps she is quite the uninhibited type. But I can't help but feel that she probably saw this comic and felt a little violated. I know I would have.

Ahaha the folks on the forums have decided that the second panel is a Vonnegut reference.

That's correct, xkcd fans. Female genitalia don't actually exist; Kurt Vonnegut just made them up to scare you. Now do you need me to read you a story before bedtime? Maybe something from Kernighan and Ritchie? (Moar like Kernighan and BITCHIE amirite?! Ha ha ha! Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna turn around and desert you...)

Yeah, that stuff confused me. I mean, I remember in Breakfast of champions he draws a picture of a beaver, then a picture of a vagina, but...unless the word getting covered up by the speech bubble is actually 'kilgore trout' I don't think it was a reference.

First my friends in high school read xkcd, and linked me to funny ones. Then I would check the webcomic myself with each update. Eventually, I too noticed that the humor was running out, the content becoming repetitive and annoying. Later still, I ran across this sublime blog, and began enjoying the criticism more than the art. But things have gone too far; I must sever all connections with the xkcd underworld. Now, like Chief Joseph, I shall read no more forever.

"I don't spend all that much time viewing nude photos on Wikipedia, and a bit after I chuckled at the joke, I was really more unsettled that Randall spent so much time viewing nude photos that he was able to spot trends in them."

Gordon Bennett. I've been browsing this site for a while, often considering posting, sometimes to agree, sometimes to disagree. But I've never felt the need to up until today.

I loved Monday's strip. I thought it was the best in ages, partly since I got it immediately (unlike the blogger on here!). But today's? Oh my.

Quite apart from the fact it's very NSFW (goodness knows what planet people who think it isn't live on) with no warning or scrolling or anything, it's riddled with problems: it's another Megan reference, worse than ever (it's OK if she is just a character, but if she's a real person, poor her!); the dialogue's poor; the situation's ridiculous (apart from the photos still being titled and having speech-bubbles in them, surely it's more likely to have diagrams with labels and photos unaltered as a proper and clear reference?); and worst of all, it's unfunny. I mean, the joke's hidden in the alt-text, and even that's not funny! Seriously, I felt on Monday that we'd seen exactly why xkcd is still worth following. Now I feel we've seen exactly why not.

Worst of all, I think it's an amusing idea. So I put together what I think's a better comic, using it (and indeed, all xkcd sources). No Megan, no labelling, SFW (apart from the swearing), hopefully better dialogue, maybe even remotely funny...?

As jarring and assholeish as the gratuitous fanserv-- I mean, "nudity" is, I don't even think it's such a big problem. A "mature warning" would have suited it fine, and people would have dealt with it nicely. The problem is, xkcd has lost too much of its credibility in order to pull of an "edgy" strip successfully. Not only the strip itself is clumsy as it is, its recent downfall has shown there's no wit and clever ideas anymore. I think this comic WOULD have worked if it were done decently, EVEN with the nude bits.

(by the way, one more linguistic rant: I HATE it when "nudity" is used to mean "there are nipples/genitalia showing". People in underwear is "not nudity". A dressed woman lifting her blouse to show her nipples is "nudity". Huh, what)

I'm actually a Penny Arcade fan, and while the strip absolutely has its low points, I have to say I still check up on it because I honestly enjoy it. Someone once mentioned that it has evolved quite a bit since its origins as classic "two people who are wacky" into "two people who are wacky, with better writing".

I also can't think of PA without also recalling the anecdote Meredith (author of Octopus Pie) made, and which I will now laboriously type out because as I'm anonymous I can't copy-paste

"In what I can only assume was a fit of boredom, the masters of gaming themselves, Jerry and Mike, invented a game called Staredith. This consisted 100% of fixating one's eyes across the aisle at yours truly. The rules were simple : stare at Meredith without moving for as long as possible - at which they were both remarkably, uncomfortably, good.

What wasn't clear was how Staredith was supposed to end. Endings were discussed, including the strong possibility that the winner is supposed to salivate on my arm"

In any case they seem like cool people who don't take themselves seriously (and it's clear that the authors of Penny-Arcade talked about it with Meredith, who found it hilarious enough to relate to her fans, rather than scrub herself for thirty minutes straight)

People often talk about (meaning I have heard this once) how the rest of the XKCD forums actually look down on the people who post in the comic discussion threads. Is there any proof of this? I don't feel like spending weeks in the Maths forum or something until someone goes "those comic discussion people suck, huh?".

@LeonardQuirm: A brave attempt, but neither the nudity nor the clumsy writing is the biggest problem with this comic. The biggest problem with this comic is that simply proposing a nonsensical situation is not how comedy works, and that THEM DOING THIS ON A TABLE AT TGIF IS TOTAL FUCKING BULLSHIT.

"In any case they seem like cool people who don't take themselves seriously"

Bitching at their own readers for not buying enough copies of Braid ("shove $5 up your stupid asses" ACTUAL QUOTE) can only be a result of not taking themselves too seriously surely right? Or how about making a comic about themselves where the bald one gives himself a shitload of hair. Mixed up with an occasional series of completely jokeless, humorless, punchline... less, and painfully mediocre "serious" comics (that horrible and incomprehensible scout kids series they couldn't even make themselves) that the fans jizz all over and claim are pure genius as if they were new works by fucking Mozart or something. It's so bad it's like if Randall did jokeless comics about quirky romantic math love with no punchline, OH WAIT HE ALREADY DOES THAT.

john: yeah, the penny-arcade guys use this thing called irony and sarcasm. you should learn to detect it one of these days. "shove $5 up your stupid asses" is the sort of thing that not even Randy could say without being clearly joking.

Or how about making a comic about themselves where the bald one gives himself a shitload of hair

That seems more like the sort of thing that people who don't take themselves at all seriously would do.

My opinion on Penny Arcade is that, while it's obviously not as fresh and original as it was five or seven years ago, it's still done by people who are a competent writer and a competent artist, and even when they just iterate without inspiration they're still much much much more able than most of their peers and colleagues.

""shove $5 up your stupid asses" is the sort of thing that not even Randy could say without being clearly joking."

It would be nice and quaint if that were true. He was dead serious when he said that though. Randy would be joking, he would have at least that much of a sense of humor, but the PA guys don't anymore. I don't blame you for wishing and hoping that bald would be sarcastic when saying such a thing, the folly of hopeful youth and etc etc such and such (etc).

As far as the art and writing being competent, I don't have much problem with the art, after 10 years the pig looking guy should be good. However, selling paintings for thousands of dollars, no matter if it's for charity (dying of cancer? Here have a Nintendo DS), is insane. The writing baldy however has just become pretentious and takes himself way too seriously, thinking that because the webcomic writing his his livelihood that he's a master. The result is that I've seen people who seriously think that he's like one of the greatest writers they've ever even known of, that they're wonderful beautiful people, and they have the best webcomic or just plain best comic in history (the painful truth being that they don't even have the best gaming webcomic, Eegra is more suited to that title).

The guy who does dresDUMB codak gets the same shit, he's basically treated like he's an incredible artist, our generation's Michelangelo, just because his webcomic has good art and has "smart writing." In other words, it's pretentious, definitely more than funnay arcaeds.

This isn't even starting on the PA guy'ses crippling social skills that make Randall, even with his Megan issues, look like Wilt Chamberlain.

Randy seems to think that recurring characters only need to always look the same to be "recurring."

omfg rast hahahahhahahahhaha

that was such a creepy picture, too. wonderfully executed.

leonardquirm: also much better. Like this is probably how Randy thought about it in his head, and then was like "well i need to show them what was going on, don't i?" (I do think Randy read this blog a little bit when Dr. Horrible talked to him and totally misinterpreted a lot of the critique given him.)

I feel like Timofei is the only one who could have made this piece of poop worse, and he already did that. Timofei, you are the 2girls1cup of xkcd comics. I congratulate you.

Yeah, I know that. But an arm that is without clothing is also "nude", but nobody calls that "nudity". As I said, a person only in his underwear is considered "not nudity". Somebody should find a more appropriate term for "no naughty bits showing", really.

I like PA. It's hit or miss, but I still find it pretty funny when it hits.

This though? Garbage. NSFW garbage even, considering I checked it at work.

I'm sure it's no coincidence that Randall only drew female parts. Not that I want to see crudely drawn wangs, but I get the idea that Randall's basically getting off to crap like this. And it disgusts me.

@ Rob, I wish, it would be nice if their charity didn't exist, and their pride in the jokeless comics with robot detectives being persecuted by mean humans was all some double meta ironic joke. But I don't think so. They are not only serious a lot of the time, but are highly self serious, and put Little Mermaid posters in their game rooms. Instead they are double dumbasses. The fact that they even made serious comics in the first place is proof. The fucking baldy even proposed to his wife through the webcomic, how much more cheesy could that be? And the answer is none, none more cheesy.

Pig-faced proposed to his wife through the comic, not bald. Come on, man, if you're going to rail against them for being serious, at least pay attention to the serious crap you're incoherently misunderstanding.

Maybe we're thinking about this too binarily. It's not like they have to be either ALL SERIOUS or NEVER SERIOUS. Yes, they've done some serious things. That doesn't mean that everything they say and post is serious.

Y'know, I thought something about this comic touched a nerve. THen I remembered that I'd just re-read the Comic Strip Doctor. I forget which strip it was, but one strip he railed on depended on an Idiot Plot, which is always, ALWAYS a bad way to tell a joke.

How STUPID must the TGIF people BE, to let these people waltz in, undress, and start snapping photos?How long must it have taken for Megan to take her clothes off? 10 seconds? 15? I don't even know.How many seconds do YOU think it would take before people noticed? 1 second? 2?And we're really expected to believe that while she was taking her clothes off, and the first two photos were taken, nobody noticed? And THEN everybody started screaming?

No, the only way no everybody in this strip it TOTALLY RETARDED is if the joke is not that "haha look you guys, they took nude photos in TGIF!" but that nobody cared until there was going to be MALE nudity! OMG penises THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

You've already got them going pretty good. Those fuckers even liked this one.

I love the this-is-my-thread-like-it-or-lump-it attitude there. They can circle jerk over xkcd all they want, but if someone else has a different opinion it is BAD and you should stop RUINING THEIR GOOD TIME.

No, Randell is using nudity only to shock, not to comment on art. If he thought up a decent situation of why two people who have apartments of their own to take naked pictures for wikipedia (why does wikipedia need more naked pictures?) at a public restaurant. I guess the idea of people being naked in a restaurant can be funny, if built up well. Like the first panel be a professor saying that students can meet to review at such and such restaurant and then it turns out to be a life drawing class.

Huh? There is a Mr. Lostman posting in a thread called "xkcd is more than a webcomic". I assumed you meant Frogwarrior=Mr. Lostman. I've never been to the tvtropes forum, but WMH has worked his usual magic over there.

Carl, I highly recommend sticking this up on your Angriest Rants list. XKCD has reached a level of shittiness that is beyond my traditional view of "okay, he's just running out of jokes now and is trying to appeal to the mass culture of people who think they are nerdy but really aren't."

I just can't take this shit anymore. My blood pressure is skyrocketing and I'd rather go do something productive than pass out from the fury amassed from the last few weeks of XKCD.

Okay, so, before I read this, I'm still freaked out, not for the explicit nature of the pictures and joke --though I'll still be intensely afraid of checking xkcd at work again tomorrow --, but the complete off-styleness of it. Stick figures, damn it. xkcd is made of stick figures, almost 600 strips of stick figures and suddenly... that! Anatomy! He never bothered to draw a proper face, and then... that! My mind is still boggled...

Now, to the post... oh, good, Carl is back from the torpor such a thing as this comic caused, hooray. Asides, it's all there: the joke is... yeah, the presentation is horrible, and speech bubbles in photos are confusing. And there's this strange impression I have that xkcd is in a world where almost every woman is called Megan. Hey, that might even make a good meta-joke in fact, haing two women on the same comic named Megan...

And so, since my commentary was oddly not posted, one final consideration: would this be finally Randall's "blaze of dadaist glory" he once threw at Davis and once was thrown back to him... in this SAME site? Well, ladies and gentleman, you've created a monster!

You know, what really bothers me the most about this comic is the fact that the punchline, the line that explains what the hell is going on here, and the "witty" observation that, if Randall Munroe wasn't...Randall Munroe, would be the only thing about this comic he would share with another human being, is shoved into the alt-text. To me, that implies one of two things: A: He screwed up and put the most important line of the comic where a lot of people would miss it. B: He thought that the punchline was an added bonus, and that the comic was good enough without it. Let that sink in...

I have always loved XKCD. I stumbled across this website a few weeks back, and thought it was silly and ridiculous that people would spend SO MUCH TIME on a comic they dont like. I could go on about my opinions of the general website at first glance, but thats not why I made this post.

I made this post because today, I agree. I do not go to comics so I can look at genetalia. This was way, way over the top.

"You know, what really bothers me the most about this comic is the fact that the punchline, the line that explains what the hell is going on here, and the "witty" observation that, if Randall Munroe wasn't...Randall Munroe, would be the only thing about this comic he would share with another human being, is shoved into the alt-text."

You know? I actually think the alt-text is NOT supposed to be necessary to understand the comic. Since the photos are labelled as "plates", it seems Randall is implying that that level of "technical" photography is present on ANY ANATOMY TEXT, NOT ONLY Wikipedia. As I see it, the Wikipedia alt-text is supposed to be exactly what the alt-text usually is: an added bonus. Yep, that makes things even more screwed-up.

In fact, I don't see the comic as being THAT non-sensical. Considering the kind of thing xkcd usually goes for, I see the storyline as:1. Couple decides to do "quirky", "dangerous" sex adventure, since that's what geeky xkcd fans do all the time because Randall says it's cool;2. Couple gets caught, "extra" photographs are taken by mistake -- and of course, the text bubbles leak into them;3. Couple decides that, with a little bit of editing, the photographs work just fine for anatomy texts.

That storyline doesn't seem TOO insubstantial, considering we've already had an entire strip dedicated solely to imagining android sex. Yet, the actual "story line" (if there is any) is obscure, unclear, unfunny and shoved under a very sloppy, gratuitous attempt at being "edgy". That is what utterly kills it to me. EVEN seeing the "logic" in it, and EVEN trying to take the graphic details lightly, I STILL passionately hate this strip and think xkcd has just hit rock bottom.

1. Couple decides to do "quirky", "dangerous" sex adventure, since that's what geeky xkcd fans do all the time because Randall says it's cool;2. Couple gets caught, "extra" photographs are taken by mistake -- and of course, the text bubbles leak into them;3. Couple decides that, with a little bit of editing, the photographs work just fine for anatomy texts.4. ????5. PROFIT!!!

Considering the xkcd fandom, I think items 4 and 5 are VERY literal in this case -- item 4 belonging to the fans, item 5 belonging to Randall.

OK, maybe you're right. I thought the alt-text was supposed to be the main joke because A: the first time I read it I couldn't tell what was going on until I read the alt-text (admittedly I didn't notice a few things the first time I read it, like the titles of the first two panels and B: the alt-text sounds like the kind of idea Randall would get and then try to build a comic around.

I personally love how this comic got twice the comments than the average terrible comic, I really can't imagine what Randall could do to illicit a stronger negative response. Perhaps a repeat of that one TERRIBLE valentine's comic (too bad that one came out before this blog), or if he makes a webcomic complaining about xkcdsucks.blogspot.com

Also: shouldn't the recent comic with the hiaku and the wrong math proof be in the angriest rants too? I mean, you had to come out of vacation to hate on that one.

"the alt-text sounds like the kind of idea Randall would get and then try to build a comic around."

I think you nailed it. The Wikipedia joke sounds far more intuitive and believable. I see a very, very big difference in "Wikipedia's anatomy images look like heavily edited pornographic photos" and "wouldn't it be TOTALLY HILARIOUS if anatomy textbooks used pictures taken in totally quirky and seXXXy settings?" -- the former could produce some great results, the latter is just creepy.

I think the alt-text looks "necessary" because, without it, the strip is just plain confusing, nearly illogical, and only gets creepier and creepier the more you understand it.

...And he could have made it SO much easier to determine what is going on if he had just used "fig. 1" instead of "plate 1." Plates only generally refer to full-page illustrations in a textbook, anyway... most people don't see the word plate and immediately think "educational picture," they think of a dish off which you eat food and then wonder what the hell Megan's boob has to do with it.

So I haven't been around a while, and if anyone remembers I like to try justifying the comic for what it does.

This time, there is nothing I can say. Beyond the graphical shock, which I'm totally cool with, there is nothing funny. I don't judge a webcomic on the methods it chooses to achieve hilarity, as long as it does. (Yes, sometimes memes can be funny, done right.) Maybe it's some super obscure reference, but until someone finds out what it is, it's as funny as prose.

Artistry, style, word choice do nothing for the comic. Current rating, 1/10. (I rounded to the nearest natural number).

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.